Next day the ugly tale was taken up afresh--over another hundred were condemned. Then Sunday brought a pause--but what a pause! The fate of two parts of the prisoners was already sealed, while for the rest the future held no sort of hope; nay, rather was that Sabbath but a black suspense which lay between us and our doom. Despite the jailers, hymns and prayers went up through that day of gloom, and when night fell a simple, fervid faith had brought real fortitude to many, though here and there loud cries and sobs betokened broken hearts which naught could heal. My turn came on the Monday, and I recollect how sweet it seemed, in spite of that which lay before me, to pass from such pestiferous foulness into the sunlight and breathe the cool, refreshing air again. But we (there were some eighty of us) had little time to drink in these delights, being hurried, under strong guard, along the streets and so into the court-house. The hall was hung with scarlet (fit colour for so murderous a place!), and at the far end, seated in a high-backed chair upon a crimson-covered dais (as though he swam in blood), I beheld the man whose very name was already a terror and a byword, not only in the stricken West, but throughout the length and breadth of England--the infamous Judge Jeffreys. At a table beneath him sat the Crown lawyers, barristers and others, shuffling and docketing their papers with much show of zeal, as if, forsooth, the trial were a fair and righteous one rather than the ghastly farce it was. On his left, in a sort of long narrow pew, sat the jury--twelve fat, well-liking fellows--picked men from the county, who could be counted on to send their fellow-countrymen to death at Jeffreys’ bidding. But though all this was new and strange to me it was the judge himself who most surprised me. I had pictured him an ugly, coarse-faced fellow, with something of the butcher in his bearing, but instead thereof I found a not ill-featured man of under forty, who, notwithstanding that debauchery had set its mark upon him, had still some claim to handsomeness. As he sat there, with his chin upon his hand, watching us in a dreamy, thoughtful fashion as we filed into the hall, it seemed scarce credible that this was the wild, ferocious brute whose ravening thirst for blood had made a mockery of law and justice. But the grim truth soon crashed on us like a thunderbolt. As soon as we were all assembled there was dead silence for a good half minute, then Jeffreys suddenly shot up and for a time stared at us with a look of startled horror, as though he knew not who we were. At last he leaned slowly forward with his hands upon the chair and said: "What have we here? Can it be? Another batch of wickedness already! How many do they number?" "Eighty-and-eight, my lord," replied a clerk, rising with swift readiness.